Know the word McDonald’s tried to remove from the dictionary | The State

Photo:
Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

The word that the McDonald’s hamburger chain tried to make disappear was ‘McJob.”, which was included in the Oxford Dictionary in 2001, as well as in the Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary in 2003.

The Merriam-Webster defines the McJob word as “a low-paying job that requires little skill and offers few opportunities for advancement“.

Upon learning that “McJob” was in two major dictionaries, the one who was McDonald’s CEO at the time, Jim Cantalupo, wrote a lengthy open letter about it.

In it, he calls the term a “slap in the face” to restaurant workers, and proposes that McJob be redefined to mean a position that “teaches responsibility,” as reported in Mashed.

Likewise, the corporate McDonald’s in the UK even considered hiring lawyers to change the definition.

Although the term appears to refer only to the golden arches chain, McJob is not only used to refer to McDonald’s jobs, but to other companies as well. For example, it has been mentioned that Amazon offers McJobs because of its poor working conditions.

Although McDonald’s tried to stop the use of the word “McJob”, it still remains in the dictionaries and does not appear to be removing it in the near future.